This book was a wild ride — in the best and weirdest possible ways. I went into it expecting a cerebral fantasy and came out with a deeply chaotic family drama, peppered with speculative tech, toxic sibling dynamics, and a narrator who isn’t afraid to take the mickey out of the entire cast.
The story follows the Wren siblings in the wake of their brilliant-but-terrible father’s death.
There’s a funeral, a mountain of buried trauma, and a whole lot of questionable decisions. Each sibling has some sort of tech-based power, but honestly, the “magic” is just flavouring — the real story is the messy emotional wreckage of growing up under pressure and privilege.
The character work is absolutely the highlight here. Meredith Wren became my accidental favourite — sharp-edged, hard to like, and surprisingly moving. No one in this book is particularly kind or sensible, but that’s sort of the point. It’s a study in moral greyness, with love, guilt, and capitalism swirling in the background like storm clouds.
What to expect:
- Self-aware, sarcastic narration
- Morally questionable rich people with emotional depth
- Superpowers as metaphor
- Themes of grief, legacy, merit, and messy healing
- Slow start, steady build, satisfying catharsis
Wouldn’t recommend this for readers who need a well-defined magic system or tightly structured plot. But if you love flawed characters, introspective chaos, and dialogue that bites, this one’s worth a go.
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